hey ya'll this may seem like a simple thing to do but i'm just a newbie to PHP. here goes. i've got and external life "/my/path/report.txt" the content of this file is arranged as id1|fname|lname|address|country|post_code id2|fname|lname|address|country|post_code id3|fname|lname|address|country|post_code id4|fname|lname|address|country|post_code id5|fname|lname|address|country|post_code id6|fname|lname|address|country|post_code id7|fname|lname|address|country|post_code i would like to be able to read through the file and extract each line to be places in a table. eg. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | fname lname | fname lname | fname lname | | address | address | address | | country | country | country | | post_code | post_code | post_code | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | fname lname | fname lname | fname lname | | address | address | address | | country | country | country | | post_code | post_code | post_code | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- any pointers in accomplishing such a task. Thanks in advance.